Guy Maddin's spinoff of, or takeoff from, a Mark Godden production for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. The Canadian filmmaker has retained several remnants of dance (along with an Asian Count Dracula and nonstop excerpts from the first two Mahler symphonies), but not enough of them for the film to be a proper record of the ballet. It is much more an homage to the black-and-white silent cinema, though even there the record is spotty. While Maddin exhibits a real feel for the surface of the form (or at any rate a feel for a fuzzy, solarized, second-generation 16mm copy of it), he doesn't carry the replication into the cutting and the camera movement. Drops of blood, fang marks, and the lining of Dracula's cape will be seen in bright red, like the revolutionary flag in Battleship Potemkin -- not a common device. Blankets of color tint, although historically justifiable, will be thrown around helter-skelter and be changed in mid-scene without rhyme or reason. The affection is abundantly clear, but not contagious. Even at a mere seventy-five minutes, the stunt proves unsustainable: maybe five minutes of inspiration, and seventy of slog. (2002) — Duncan Shepherd
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